1) It is showing 'http://localhost/' in browser address bar, but no content appear on page.
2) when I type 'http://localhost/index.html' in browser and press Enter then it show 'It works', but typing 'http://localhost/index.php' and pressing enter it again show nothing.

could any1 tell me whether my installation is faulty (however i did not get any error while XAMPP install) OR I need to do some setting

1) It is showing 'http://localhost/' in browser address bar, but no content appear on page.2) when I type 'http://localhost/index.html' in browser and press Enter then it show 'It works', but typing 'http://localhost/index.php' and pressing enter it again show nothing.

could any1 tell me whether my installation is faulty (however i did not get any error while XAMPP install) OR I need to do some setting

Thanks,ab

No ans I checked access.log in apache folder ....
"GET / HTTP/1.1" 500 -'
Do any1 have any clue .

Also do you have another web server running, perhaps as a service, or another instance of PHP running (the favoured issue here) because the page "It works" is the standard index.html page, as you pointed out, from the htdocs folder in XAMPP - XAMPP will give a php based Welcome page when all is working correctly but not if Apache is not running it's own instance of PHP.

Stop any other instances of PHP that may be installed by other programs and are accessing via the system path variable - Eclipse perhaps, there may be a php.ini file in the Windows folder that may be a clue, as Apache in XAMPP uses the php.ini file in the apache\bin folder - try renaming any other php.ini files you find, other than those in the .\xampp tree, to php.ini.bak for example, then try again after restarting your XAMPP Apache server.

Find out what is on the ports that XAMPP uses by double clicking on .\xampp\xampp-portcheck.exeThey should all be free...

...but first you would need to stop all XAMPP components by using the stop bat files including running the stop services bat files - Using the bat files eliminates any possible issues with the XAMPP Control Panel.
.\xampp\apache_stop.bat
.\xampp\mysql_stop.bat
.\xampp\apache\apache_uninstallservice_2.2.bat
.\xampp\mysql\mysql_uninstallservice.bat

Tip - using the .\xampp\apache_start.bat file instead of the XAMPP Control Panel will give some good clues if the XAMPP instance of Apache is having problems starting.

So in conclusion, it really does seem to point to a rogue instance of PHP that is preventing the XAMPP instance of PHP from being used.

Finally it worked You all guys are genius truly esp. Sharley u r Hero.
Thnaks for such detailed reply... it worked

Before coming to XAMPP... I tried PHP with IIS earlier. However I uninstalled PHP. But as you point that there may old PHP content in Windows... yes there were some leftover in Windows/PHP folder. on cleaning it worked for me....

once again Thanks to all who replied nd to those even who spent time on looking my concern...

You have provided no details of what you are seeing, what you have tried already, what you have changed in any of the configuration files, what OS, what XAMPP version and how you installed it and any error messages you receive.

It is hard for anyone to attempt to troubleshoot your particular issue without this information.

If you have tried all the remedies found on these forums, after searching, then a complete reinstall of XAMPP usually fixes things.

Before uninstalling, follow the instructions in my last post above for stopping all XAMPP components including the XAMPP control panel and uninstalling all XAMPP components running as services using the bat files - then and only then delete the XAMPP folder and re-install XAMPP and my preferred method is to download and extract the 7Zip version.